VTK XML format and data type specific variants

Development
9

What is the problem you wan to solve?

Very good point. I see it as two fold:

  1. Unified file extension: using different extensions based on data types makes it harder to put together generic pipeline scripts that can handle all types of input data. Such scripts have to have some runtime component that changes the filename based on the input data type, currently, which is unnecessary and unique to VTK-XML readers/writers.

  2. Unified reader/writer implementation: current we have a convoluted hierarchy of XML readers and writers. Consequently, developers have to create the write type of XML reader or writer based on the data type. Having a single vtkXMLDataReader/vtkXMLDataWriter will not only simplify the implementation but also make it easier to use. I know there’s a GenericXMLReader/Writer, but that doesn’t address the fact that implementation is still convoluted, split among too many subclasses and hard to debug/develop/modify.